Countless billions of beverage containers, typically for individual consumption, are opened annually in the United States and elsewhere, with hundreds of millions of beverage containers being opened daily. Thus, there has been considerable attention to development of devices facilitating the opening of beverage containers, the great majority of which are either cans with finger-operated tabs or bottles with pry-off bottlecaps.
Removable pull-off tabs of beverage cans posed two significant problems. When removed from containers, the pull-off tabs created sharp edges along the tab perimeters which could cause injury, primarily cut fingers. Also, such sharp edges could cut through trash bags, and thus potentially exacerbate the risks and problems. Of greatest concern, however, was that removed pull-off tabs contributed to general littering of yards, parks, parking areas and the like.
Therefore, for some time now so-called stay-on-tabs have been the standard mechanism for manual opening of beverage containers. Stay-on-tabs include a small ring portion through which a rivet secures the stay-on tab to the center of the top of the beverage can. The bulk of the stay-on tab is a fairly rigid, finger-liftable portion which, when lifted at a finger-engageable end, pivots with respect to the small ring portion such that a forward portion of the stay-on tab moves downwardly on top of a scored portion of the container top to push it inwardly, thereby creating an opening for beverage flow. Both the inwardly-pushed portion of the container top and the stay-on tab remain with the container top, and so avoid the above-described problems of removable tabs.
One drawback of stay-on-tabs is the problem sometimes encountered by a user, particularly a user with weak fingers, long fingernails, or fingers with wide fingertips. This drawback has at least been addressed by certain prior developments in the field of beverage-can openers.
Another problem of stay-on tabs, however, is related to the fact that the key advantage of stay-on tabs is the fact that they stay on. More specifically, in recent years the removal and collection of large quantities of tabs has been used as a mechanism for providing credits for various commercial or charitable purposes, which may involve financial awards for various causes and purposes. Because of this, when it comes to stay-on tabs, which are the dominant (nearly universal) form of tabs used for beverage containers today, large numbers of beverage consumers repeatedly bend stay-on tabs until the metal adjacent to the small ring-like portion thereof (through which the rivet secures the tab to the top of the beverage can) fractures, in effect causing removal of the tab. This removal process is not only a bit time-consuming and inconvenient, but nearly always leaves a ragged, sharp metal edge on the container top which can pose safety concerns.
A great variety of beverage-container openers have been invented and developed, including a number which are combination opener devices, i.e., devices capable both of removing bottle caps and lifting stay-on tabs to press open the scored portions of the tops of beverage cans. Certain of such combination opener devices are of a type having a first end portion for bottlecap removal, a second end portion for lifting stay-on tabs of beverage cans (to open the cans), and an intermediate handle portion therebetween. In certain of such devices, the first end portion has a cap-receiving opening defined in part by (a) a lifting-edge section engageable with the cap under-edge and (b) an opposite holding-edge section engageable with the cap top-surface, and the second end portion has a tab-receiving slot.
These devices, however, are not developed or configured to also allow easy, complete, and therefore clean and safe removal of stay-on tabs. Their configurations are such that they would interfere with or make difficult their use, particularly by users with fairly weak hands and fingers for any tab removal purpose—even if a user might have intended such purposes. In addition, even in such a hypothetical situation, the structures of such prior combination devices fall far short of that which would facilitate operations.
Such combination beverage-container opener devices of the prior art tend to be of fairly complex construction, which means that production thereof tends to entail more cost than may be desirable for such simple tools.